作者：David Uberti
編譯：朱弘川
原文網址：http://www.cjr.org/innovations/in_at_least_one_respect.php
IN SOME RESPECTS, Facebook isn’t so different from the publishers that rely on it. A report from Gizmodo this week suggests that a team of “news curators” subjectively selected stories for the objective-sounding “trending” section of the Facebook homepage. One former contractor alleged that the team suppressed conservative news—and conservative outlets—that the social network’s almighty algorithm surfaced. The obvious analogy is to left-leaning journalists picking stories for a newspaper’s front page. Facebook, however, reaches audiences no newspaper could imagine.
就某方面來說，臉書和那些仰賴它的新聞出版商並沒有什麼不同。根據Gizmodo最近的一篇報導，看似客觀的臉書「熱門話題」（trending）服務，其實先由臉書的工作團隊篩擇新聞題材後，再推送到臉書的首頁上。一位離職員工指出，這個團隊抑制保守派的新聞和觀點（臉書強大的演算法所企圖掩飾），就好比立場左傾的記者挑選報導，做為報紙頭條的作法一樣。然而臉書的影響力，可不是任何報紙能比擬的。
The allegations have stoked fears that social platforms may be pressing their thumbs on the ideological scale. The Senate Commerce Committee even requested a fuller explanation of “trending” selection in a letter sent to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday. In a statement to Brian Stelter later on Tuesday, Facebook said it’s looking forward to answering questions about the process.
這也引發了社交平台可能控制人們思想的疑慮。美國參議院商務委員會（The Senate Commerce Committee）稍早已要求臉書創辦人Mark Zuckerberg，就「熱門話題」的篩選機制，提出詳細的說明。同一天，稍晚給CNN記者Brian Stelter的聲明中，臉書表示他們很期待回答這個問題。
It’s unclear how much this small plot of homepage real estate affects stories’ reach; users’ newsfeeds have prime location by comparison, and the “trending” tab is hard to locate on mobile devices. Yet the report cuts against Facebook’s altruistic-sounding mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” What’s more, it alludes to the more far-reaching editorial-like decisions social networks make in sorting news and digital content. Facebook may describe itself as “a platform,” but it acts a lot like a publisher.
目前還不是很清楚這次事件的影響層面有多大；使用者的新聞來源主要是經由對照（comparison）產生，而「熱門話題」這項服務，在行動裝置上較難見到成效。這篇報導對比臉書的成立宗旨──賦予人們權力去分享及使世界更開放及連結──無疑是一大諷刺。再者，它使得社交網絡的新聞分類及內容篩選，最終演變成於編輯決策的產物。臉書自許為一個平台，但實際上它所做的，卻更像個出版商一樣。
As prominently argued by Emily Bell, director of Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Facebook is increasingly shaping the contours of the public square, and citizens and news organizations have little choice but to go along for the ride. The power shift raises the all-important question of how information travels in free societies—and what we know about it.
哥倫比亞大學數位新聞中心（Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism）主席Emily Bell說，臉書正逐漸形塑公眾領域的輪廓，而且逼得公民及新聞組織乖乖就範。這股力量也引發了很重要的問題：資訊在自由社會裡是如何流通的？我們究竟了解多少？
“This is an unregulated field. There is no transparency into the internal working of these systems,” Bell said in a University of Cambridge speech earlier this year. “We are handing the controls of important parts of our public and private lives to a very small number of people, who are unelected and unaccountable.”
「這是一個不受管制的場域，我們根本不懂其內部運作是怎麼回事」，Bell在今年稍早的一場演講中提到。「我們正把公、私領域的控制權，交給一群我們未曾謀面、以及無法信任的少數人手中。」
News organizations once had a more central role in setting the terms of public debate, balancing money-making aspects of publishing with more civically minded accountability journalism. They also generally followed widely accepted journalistic standards. Social networks have assumed much of the same power, Bell and others have argued, though they typically use more opaque processes and have a greater focus on those profitable slices of publishing. That’s not to say this new construct is necessarily worse, but it is foreign. And Facebook has little incentive to open up about its methodology.
新聞業曾經扮演著引導公眾辯論的重要角色，藉由提供公眾參與的問責機制，平衡了以營利為目標的出版
業，並同時遵守普遍可接受的新聞教條。社交網絡也有相同的能量，Bell和其他人認為，雖然它們運作方式較不透明，和較關注在出版的利益上，但這並不代表情況就比較糟，只是對我們來說比較陌生。不過，臉書也不太願意向世人揭開它的神祕面紗。
Indeed, the corporation occupies a historically unique position. On the one hand, it’s a tech giant whose in-house tools and massive user base give it omnipotence over media outlets. On the other, it’s a media company in its own right, relying on a steady stream of content for survival. And just as journalists have always been defensive toward claims of bias, Facebook, too, has denied its own subjectivity.
的確，臉書有它獨特的歷史定位，一方面它是科技巨頭，以自有的研發技術及大量使用者基礎做後盾，讓它在相關媒體業務上無往不利。另一方面，臉書本身即是媒體，仰賴穩定的新聞內容來獲利。新聞記者總是否認有特定立場，臉書也一樣，並沒有什麼不同。
The social network’s response to Gizmodo’s story on its “trending” section was telling in this regard. On Tuesday morning, VP of Search Tom Stocky wrote a post denying the allegations of political bias, adding that Facebook’s team of news curators merely shepherd topics already identified by its algorithm. The supposed impartiality of this algorithm acts as a smokescreen to the other charges. Wrote Stocky:
